Dascus awoke in darkness. The absence of any light source was so complete it stifled him. He could not tell how much time had passed, except he’d been held in a dungeon cell for what had to be several days while Izik’s men beat and tortured him for details. Then, suddenly he’d been grabbed from the floor and dragged farther down into the basement. He remembered the stairs and then being hit over the head but nothing afterward.

Now awake after unknown hours or days, he was tied to a chair in the blackness.

A sudden flare erupted in front of him, blinding him so his eyes shut hard and instantly. It took a long moment before he could open them. When he did, a lone brazier burned low against a stone wall. An old man stood beside it, watching him.

“Coltair,” he seethed through a fat lip and aching jaw.

The man, slightly hunched, moved ahead. He wore a heavy, black cloak over his shoulders and a permanent scowl marred his features. Coltair stopped a few feet away, close enough to view him but not to touch. He held a perfectly smooth stone in his one hand, which he rubbed with his thumb in a circular motion.

Dascus could not figure out if it was with anger or contempt the emperor eyed him with now.

Gift… Gift… Gift…

Dascus stiffened, but Coltair remained perfectly still.

“Yes,” he said darkly, “they see you, Dascus. Gift that you are.”

Dascus fidgeted with his bindings. These were undead voices, spirits. No one else was supposed to know that about him.

“What is? What are you talking about, old man?” he replied in frustration.

“So, you will pretend with me then. Sad that you would choose the lesser path, really. We are gods, you and I. To hear the ancestors is the rarest of gifts. The rarest of tasks is what lies ahead for us. Unfortunate your mother hid you from me as well. We could have begun our work so many years ago, but alas, at least you are now a man and not a snivelling child any longer,” Coltair added and walked away.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You killed my mother, which is reason enough to ensure I will never help you.”

Coltair chuckled and kept walking leisurely around the room, rubbing his rock.

“Your mother, yes,” he murmured. “A lost cat in a storm, that one.”

“Don’t,” Dascus warned, but Coltair ignored him.

“She heard the voices. Did she tell you that?” he asked him, but Dascus kept his eyes forward and refused to answer. “Yes, she was a ‘mystic,’ the Bough call them. A “sensitive.” Someone with the ability but not the power; she could hear but do nothing about it. What a waste.”

Dascus burned with hatred but pulled all his will not to engage.

“She did not tell me about you,” Coltair went on and when his path crossed Dascus’s line of sight, he saw him grinning. “She didn’t have to. I knew you were coming to me, Dascus. Long before you were even born.” He paused his talking but continued to walk around. His feet shuffled against the stone floor and when he passed the brazier, his shadow cast long across the floor.

“They told me,” he whispered but now suddenly very close to his ear. Dascus jumped in startlement.

“Gift! They called to me. ‘A like-mind that bore a gift.’ That was their clue. All I had to do was find you and the winds brought you right along. You were what, two when you first arrived? What, pray tell, would you call that but unbridled, undeniable destiny?

He had returned to walking and crossed again in front of him. He stopped now and turned to face him.

“I don’t deny the forces we hear,” Dascus said finally, recognizing it was useless to refute. “But what you want with them and what I want are two separate things.”

“And what is that, dear boy?” Coltair asked, now amused.

Dascus glared at him. “You want power. I want them to leave me alone. If it were up to me, I would have none of it at all. My mother’s affliction passed to me. Unfortunate, but that doesn’t mean I need to let it control my life. And don’t forget it was she that brought me here, not me. I came back to save her from YOU!”

Coltair leaned on his heels and moved to clasp his hands behind his back. “You think you are mystic?”

Dascus huffed and looked away.

Coltair moved closer and finally very close. One hand came around to grab Dascus’s chin hard and hold it. “You are no mystic, Dascus,” he growled very close to his face. “You are a necromancer, like me. A full power interpreter of the undead. The ancestors gave us these gifts to guide us in their future. You see here, they have assembled, grown and bided their time for us. Just the two that could hear them and work with them to see their divine plan to fruition.” He shoved Dascus’s face away and stood slowly upright to loom over him.

“What plan?” Dascus snapped.

“Immortality, my dear boy,” Coltair replied factually.

Dascus looked up at him, now beginning to feel afraid. “Immortality?”

Coltair held his gaze. “Theirs and mine,” he told him. “And through you, the gift the ancestors insisted was crucial to this plan, we will succeed.” He turned from him and unhurriedly walked to the giant, polished bronze door. With his hand on the handle, he paused to look at him for a long moment again.

“It took fifty-three years for me to interpret their meaning and put into place all the moving pieces that stretch now across the world. You, they will educate for however long they deem it necessary to be ready before the next phase. From what I gather, that isn’t very long. This will likely be very frightening for you, my boy, maybe even painful, but take consolation in the fact that when it is all over, we will live forever, unable to be killed or harmed and the wisdom of the ancestors will wash over this world like a wave for all to serve. I will be king of all Darkness and you, my princely son, my partner in the Undead . The balance of all life and death will be secured in the shade, not the light, and therefore all will be ours to command.”

Coltair turned and walked from the crypt, pulling the enormous door closed shut behind him, locking Dascus in the pitch black.